I had my colon resected on July 25th, open surgery...lovely scar running all down my stomach, but that's hardly the point.

Before I had surgery I was doing weight training/cardio 3-4 days a week. I have not been given the go ahead yet from my surgeon but am really wanting to get back to it.

Mainly, I'm wanting to work on my leg muscles since, somehow, during the surgery or the epidural, I went numb through my entire quadicep on my right leg. I'm doing PT, but feel like I could help it along with some light weight training on some of the machines at the gym.

Thoughts on how soon I can get started? I really don't care if people at the gym see me walking with a cane! I'd also like to get started before I start Chemo on Sept. 11. I'll have more questions on that one soon!

Mom, I went back to the gym 3 weeks after surgery, with my surgeon's okay. I could do the treadmill, but certainly no ab work or lifting. From experience, I can say that it is a real benefit to your body to keep up as much exercising as possible. When I was on chemo I still did aerobics, the treadmill, and the bikes-not all the same day, and not with the same energy as before. You may find that as chemo progresses your strength goes down. That is normal, and it will come back. I remember struggling to ride the bike 9 minutes and almost crying because I couldn't do an hour spinning class. Whatever you can do will be a great accomplishment. Just listen to your doctor as to what you can do, and also listen to your body. You have a whole future ahead, you don't have to get back to "normal" in a few weeks. Let us know how things are going. There is a whole group here who have been through this.

Please don't be in a hurry to get back to any type of strenuous exercise even if you were doing it prior to surgery! Also surgery that takes place in the pelvic area can cause some neurological problems in the legs. Eventually the nerves will repair and any odd sensations or weakness will go away. You don't want to do any damage to your leg while the nerves are healing. I was advised swimming or easy walking after 6-8 weeks from surgery. I started very slowly back to my regular routine which is very similar to yours. I was very careful with abs exercises but still ended up with a hernia 1 1/2 years after surgery. Mind you I had a couple of fairly involved surgeries - temp. ileostomy for 6 months then a permanent colostomy. The hernia was at the closed site of the temp. ileo. Now 3+ years out I'm back to most of my program but still very careful about ab work. Be patient!

Hi, all, I know you need time to recover from surgery but would also like to point out article in Oncology magazine that came out this month - 2 different studies showed that stage 2 and stage 3 ( that's who was in the study) colorectal cancer survivors who exercised 6 hours per week reduced the risk of recurrence by close to 50%.

My oncologist pointed this out to me, and you can google and find many articles that talk about the study..

So while it is not good to exercise too soon, it does seem like there is a real
benefit for us to exercise.

As I have not exercised that much, I have now stared doing an hour per day.